


Space Oddity

by Captain_Ackerman



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Panic Attacks, Suicidal Thoughts, Whump, mental health
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-30
Updated: 2018-10-30
Packaged: 2019-08-11 00:52:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16465571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Captain_Ackerman/pseuds/Captain_Ackerman
Summary: Lance likes not talking about stuff, and so does Keith. Lance is struggling. Keith is bad at hugs. Together, they’re dysfunctional, and the worst possible pair to be in this situation.Obvious warning, mentions of suicide and general anxiety/depression.





	Space Oddity

Lance had his forehead on the bathroom floor.  
It wasn’t ideal, and it probably wasn’t particularly clean, but it was cold.

He had been flat, splayed out with his ribs pressing flush against the floor, but he’d curled up now, tucking his knees under his stomach, hands clasped above his head, weakly grasping clumps of matted hair and pressing into his scalp.  
_What am I doing?_  
Time didn’t move on the castle like it had on Earth, but it felt like Sunday evening. It felt like the calm receding of the tide, before crushing deadlines and panic. But he hadn’t had a deadline in months now.  
_Why am I panicking?_  
The tears had already happened, and passed, and the numbness had set in. His eyes were stinging but it was relieved slightly by chill of the cold floor, and now the burning hot swell of tears had passed, he was left with a persistent sniffle that forced him to breathe heavily through his mouth for fear that any loud sniffs would be heard. Realistically, he knew those fears were unfounded. The thought that a ship this advanced wouldn’t have soundproofed walls was ridiculous, but he wasn’t willing to risk it.  
_God what do I do if someone comes in?_  
The numbness stayed, dragging its heels. It clung on longer than it should have done.  
He swore it didn’t usually stay this long.  
_Get your ass up, McLain._  
He pushed himself up on his elbows, and the force propelled his knees backwards and out from under him, with his arms unable to support this sudden transfer of weight and sending his head back down onto the floor with a crack. He tried to laugh at himself.  
_If it bruises, what’s my excuse?_  
He’d done it once before at the Garrison, but that had been a bathroom sink. And it had been worse then, sharing a room with Hunk. Not that Hunk was a bad roommate, actually the total opposite. It was a guaranteed hot meal, every night. Full of spices that weren’t quite home, but were close enough and prepared with the gentleness and respect of a son preparing a mother’s recipe. But there hadn’t been a whole lot of privacy. None, actually. Especially not living with a bustling Samoan mother goose.  
_Door – I hit my head on the door. Is that believable?_  
He elected to fall of that bridge when he came to it.  
Standing up was fine the second time around. His muscles ached from training, and his head ached for obvious reasons. But other than that, he was ok.  
But then he locked eyes with the mirror.  
_Shit_ -  
He remembered Pidge telling him eagerly that if you stare at your reflection for a long time in a dim room, your brain gets lost and makes you look like a monster. Lance distinctly remembered elbowing her in the shoulder and quipping something along the lines of ‘no, Pidge, that’s just your reflection.’  
_Oh_.  
This was probably what she was on about.  
Except the castle lights were on full glare. Far too bright, in fact.  
He didn’t remember looking this bad when he came in here.  
His eyes were shrouded in a deep purple, and bloodshot with a sore red puffiness, but the rest of his face was washed out and sickly, colourless to the point of being genuinely quite unnerving.  
It was enough to shock the fuzzy wave of white-noise numbness out of his system, as he began running the cold tap and filled his ears with the first sound in an hour that wasn’t his own breathing.  
It was almost therapeutic, and the best he could do, alone on a spaceship in the infinite void.  
_They definitely won’t believe it’s hay fever, huh._  
He started shovelling handfuls of cold water onto his face and around his eyes, attempting to cool the telltale puffiness. He dipped his forehead under the water for a few seconds, enjoying the relief it bought, applying pressure to his temples with his index fingers in an attempt to shift the lingering headache that the unfortunate collision with the floor had only strengthened, before the unnatural stooping position sent a wave of nausea through him and he righted himself a little too quickly, losing vision for a second, and wobbling where he stood.  
“Lance, can you come down to the bridge.”  
The voice over the intercom was jarring, and Allura’s.  
_Oh shit-_  
What did they want with him? Oh God what if they were under attack. What if he was about to have to fight the Galra looking like a sniffly middle schooler who was crying in the bathrooms. He wasn’t ready to fight right now. He wasn’t ready to anything right now.  
_Why do I do this at the shittiest times._  
His brain was whirring with possible excuses. Ways to justify it.  
Ways to not look weak.  
Stupid, he could deal with. But weak was humiliating.  
_Why the fuck am I like this?_

He sat on the edge of his bed.  
His eyes started stinging, but he refused to let this start again.

_Get a grip._

He was supposed to be at the bridge. He had been so worried about it a minute ago.

It didn’t matter anymore, and he felt a lot better.  
Somehow, stupidly, he’d thought space would be different from home.  
But here he was, sat on his bed, aching and late.  
It was as if he’d never even left.

“Lance?”  
Oh God  
“Lance wake your ass up you’re needed on the bridge.”  
There was a pause, and then an exasperated pounding on the wall.  
For some reason, Lance held his breath.  
A final bout of hammering on the wall, and then the muffled voice turned its attention to an even more muffled voice, which sounded to Lance like a voice through the helmet comms system.  
“Yeah Shiro, I think he’s asleep. He’s not responding anyway. I’ll start heading back, I can’t be bothered with-“  
Lance opened the door.  
_It was Keith. Of course it was Keith. Fuck._  
“You going for fashionably late, or what.”  
There was muffled laughter on the other end of the comms line. Lance had to give it to him, it was some pretty good sass.  
He opened his mouth to retort.  
Then he opened his mouth to apologise.  
Then he looked at the ground and prayed that Keith would leave.  
He knew his prayers weren’t answered when he heard a sharp inhale.  
“Hey, man-“  
It was almost sickeningly soft, and Lance’s best panic response in the moment was to laugh, and then attempt to push past Keith in the hopes that he could just outrun him and his weird, out-of- character concern.  
An arm grabbed his wrist, and he quietly cursed.  
Lance tugged forwards, but the hand maintained a firm, nearing on painful grip. Realising that he wasn’t going to overpower his fellow paladin, and by this point well into the throes of a fight of flight response, Lance turned back sharply.  
Keith flinched, and appeared ready to duck, but kept a firm hold locking eyes with the frantic figure that had come barrelling out of the door.  
Lance didn’t even move to swing.  
“Please don’t do this to me, Keith.”  
It caught him off guard far more than a punch ever could, and after a moment’s silence, he slowly reached to his helmet with his other hand, removing it and, reading the situation, turning of the comms line.  
“Lance, what’s going on?”  
“Please let go.”  
Keith looked down at his grip on Lance’s arm, hesitant to let him go before he explained whatever the hell was going on, and back up to meet Lance’s eyes, not brimming with tears or anything like that, but pleading, almost glazed over. Less like a rabbit in the headlights, more like a rabbit who’s already been hit by the car.  
“Ok.”  
He half expected for Lance to snap out of it at any moment. This was some kind of elaborate prank, right? He was almost certain that the minute he loosened his grip on the trembling, pale mass he’d go bounding off down the corridor in fits of laughter. Or, alternatively, he’d shove him to the floor and make some quip about him being a paranoid control freak. Keith was ready for either eventuality.  
But nothing happened. Lance didn’t even move an inch, just let his arm smack heavily into his side as Keith let go.  
“Lance, what the hell is going on?”  
“I need to go to the bridge.”  
“No, you need to slow down. Allura can wait.”  
“I _need_ to go to the bridge.”  
“Lance, chill. It’s not urgent, just a routine check. What’s going on with you? Do you need a pod or something?”  
“No I’m fine.”  
He had meant for it to sound cool and relaxed, but it all came out as one blurted word.  
“Lance don’t keep secrets from us. We’ve gotta be open, remember? We start keeping secrets, the whole team falls apart.”  
“I’m not keeping secrets I’m just-“  
“Just what?”  
“Tired. I’m just tired. Please let me go to the bridge.”  
It felt like every other scrap they’d ever had, but this time only Keith seemed to be escalating it. And, this time, Keith realised before he let it get away from him. He crouched down, picked up his helmet, and clicked the comms line on again, as Lance watched, silently.  
“Hey, guys? Don’t worry about Lance, he just woke up so he’s probably just gonna keel over if you make him jog up to the bridge. Yeah I’ll- yeah I know response checks are important. Make him do it tomorrow or something, it’s not like you’ll get an accurate result at this point. Yeah, ok- yeah. I might hit the training deck so don’t wait up.”  
He clicked the switch back off again.  
“No need to go to the bridge. Happy now?”  
He didn’t realise how unnecessarily aggressive he’d sounded until it was compared with a barely audible ‘thanks’ from Lance.  
“Lance you can’t really act like everything’s fine here. I’m sorry to corner you like this but you look awful.”  
The panic, which had settled into humiliation, now seemed to have settled into a meek, begrudging acceptance.  
“It’s stupid.”  
“Yeah it’s obviously not stupid.”  
There was another silence, heavier than the one before it.  
“Listen man, I’m not super good at this kinda thing so you’re gonna have to work with me here, or I’m bundling you off to someone who is.”  
“Like who?”  
“I dunno I hadn’t thought that far ahead. Shiro, probably.”  
Lance’s eyes widened.  
“No please don’t do that.”  
“Why?”  
“I really do need to be any more humiliated than I already am, Keith.”  
“Why are you humiliated?”  
“Because I’m stood here, looking like shit, feeling like shit, being interrogated by you, of all people. I look like a fifth grader having a break down. I just wanna crawl into a corner and die.”  
Keith was unsure how to take this. It was said like a joke, but Lance was barely smiling, and seemed to be trying to edge his way back into his room, presumably so he could shut Keith out and avoid the conversation going any further.  
Anticipating this, and realising that this had gone on to the extent where he couldn’t leave with a clear conscience now, Keith put a hand on Lance’s shoulder, in the most Shiro-esque way he could manage, and led him gently back in the door. Lance let it happen, which was confirmation in Keith’s mind that there was _definitely_ something up, but he seemed to draw the line at sitting next to Keith on his bed, instead adopting the foetal position with his forehead up against the wall and his back to his unwelcome intruder, his humiliation so great that he was willing to look like a petulant toddler for the sake of not having to stand up and have the entire ship swimming around him any more.  
“Please go away. I’m sorry for missing the drill thing, you don’t have to embarrass me any more.”  
“I’m not trying to embarrass you, Lance.”  
“Why won’t you leave me alone.”  
“Because you look awful. You’ve been crying, your room’s a mess, you’re just in an undershirt and jeans which has got to be cold. I’m not an idiot, Lance.”  
There was no response.  
“Just, tell me what’s on your mind. Then I’ll leave.”  
There was one more heavy silence, one that lasted so long that Keith was almost ready to call it quits and leave, only stopped by a voice that had both double the conviction it had previously, as if the silence had exerted a great, crushing pressure on him.  
“I can’t do this anymore.”  
Keith’s breath hitched in his throat, catching him off guard.  
“What do you mean?”  
“I’m sorry. I know we’re supposed to be fearless warriors and all that. I’m so sorry. I’m so unqualified for this, Keith. I’m not supposed to be here. It’s nothing to do with gimmicks or anything, it’s not as shallow as, like, you guys have a thing and I don’t. It’s-“  
His voice was softer now, just a little more than a whisper, even though his words made it sound like he wanted to scream.  
“-if I fuck up. And I _have_. I have so many times. But if I fuck up really bad here, someone could die. One of you could die. At least one of you _will_ die if you guys keep me on this team much longer because I am the biggest threat to you guys right now.”  
At the beginning it had sounded spontaneous. But towards the end, it almost felt rehearsed.  
“You don’t need a class clown, Keith. You need a soldier.”  
Keith adjusted his seat, in an attempt to reaffirm his presence in the room, sensing that Lance was rattling off the result of months of panic.  
“How long have you been sitting on this, Lance?”  
“This specifically? I… dunno. Since we found the blue lion? Maybe before. Since rescuing Shiro.”  
“What about _not_ this specifically?”  
“Keith. This world doesn’t need me.”  
He said it with such strange calmness that Keith almost thought he’d misheard.  
“I’m a cargo pilot with a million people who can do the exact same job as me, and, hell, a million siblings to replace me. My grades were mediocre, my piloting is mediocre, my combat is mediocre at best. I keep running into danger in the hopes that it’ll make me look brave but God, Keith. I just want to die. It’d be so easy.”  
He was still frighteningly calm.  
“People get tired of me.”  
He took a long pause, like he was bracing himself for impact.  
“I’m tired of me.”

And then there was a hand on his shoulder. And another pulling his other shoulder out from underneath him and upwards until he was sat up, wrapped around the other figure with his head leaning heavily on his shoulder. Still numb.

There were so many things Lance expected Keith to say.  
‘Don’t be so hard on yourself’  
‘You’re a valuable member of the team.’  
‘You can’t quit, we need you.’  
‘You’re right.’  
‘You are useless.’  
‘We don’t need you.’  
‘We should have left you on Earth.’  
‘We are tired of you, Lance.’  
‘You should just-‘

 

“It’s going to be ok.”

Lance took a sharp inhale, which turned into a feeble choke, and let out an exhale, which turned into a sob.  
“God I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t want this to happ-“  
He was cut off by Keith gently placing two hands on his back, one between his shoulder blades, one slightly lower down, just about in line with his waist. Even though they were in would could only be described as a hugging position, Keith was applying any force to Lance, just keeping a reassuring contact between them. In any other situation, it would have been infuriating how calm and goddamn helpful he was being, but right now Lance was in no position to complain, far too preoccupied with trying to steady his breathing and delay the onset of what felt like an emotional freight train barrelling towards him.  
His attempts didn’t work, and Keith obviously felt him tensing up as the first wave started to spread out from his chest.  
“Keith, please can you leave.”  
It had come out as something closer to a gasp, but despite the urgency in his voice, his limbs seemed to stay heavy and lifeless.  
“Lance I’m not gonna ditch you. Especially not if you’re about to have your second panic attack in a day.”  
For some reason, Keith’s confident diagnosis of it stopped Lances whirring brain in its tracks for a second, and for some reason his immediate response was to laugh  
Not a proper laugh, but that ‘quick smiling exhale through tears’ laugh.  
“Third."  
“ _Third_?”  
Keith was incredulous, and Lance could almost hear his mind racing.  
“When was the other one?”  
“This morning.”  
“After training?”  
“Before training.”  
“Oh God, Lance.”  
“Yeah it’s been a pretty shitty day to be honest with you, Keith.”

Lance’s voice still sounded deceptively calm, but his body was burning up and the back of his neck was damp with sweat. He was breathing heavily, creating a warm patch on Keith’s shoulder where he had buried his face. He was shaking too, to the point that it felt like he was shivering, which all merged together to create a heavy, trembling mass of heat and panic.

“Hey Keith?”  
“Yeah.”  
“Not to be a bummer but either you let me go run to the bathroom or I vomit all over you right now.”  
Keith released his hold on Lance, and he stumbled frantically off the bed, and for a second Keith feared Lance was about to make a dash for the door and do something incredibly stupid, but to his relief he dragged his heavy limbs into the bathroom. He heard the thump of Lance’s knees hitting the floor, and by the time he’d followed him in, he was dry heaving over the toilet.

“Fuck this really isn’t the prettiest I’ve been, huh.”  
It was the most Lance thing to say.  
_Thank God_ , thought Keith, through soft laughter. _That’s Lance._  
The retching went on for a few more minutes. Keith had gone to look for something to hold Lance’s hair out of his face, but in finding nothing, resolved to hold it back himself, making small circles on his back with his free hand. He wasn’t sure if it was helping or not, but Lance wasn’t batting him away.  
Finally, he slumped backwards and Keith let up, moving to his side as Lance placed his head against the cold sink and closed his eyes. He was still breathing unnervingly fast, and his skin had a feverish blush to it.  
“Hey man, I’m really sorry. About all of this.”  
His throat was hoarse, but it was low and calm, and almost his voice again.  
“It’s not your fault, Lance.”  
“But-“  
“Nope. Not gonna argue with you right now. Are they usually this bad?”  
“Oh, this- to be honest with you man, this is a nice one. Hate to admit it, but I think that headlock of a hug kinda threw it off course.”  
“Nothing came up, so I’m kinda guessing it all came up earlier, right.”  
“Yeah, you could put it like that.” He took a deep breath and held it for a second before he let it go.  
“Haven’t had much of an appetite so it wasn’t much.”  
“You should get something to eat.”  
“Not looking like this.”  
Keith took him in for the first time since the brunt of the attack had passed, and he looked shattered. The red flush was giving way to a sickly pale again, and it had left him hollow and exhausted, still scrunching his eyes closed in what Keith could only guess was a feeble attempt to shut out everything that had just happened.  
Now the panic was over, the humiliation seemed to have set in again.  
“Want me to go get you some food?”  
Lance seemed ready to refuse him immediately, then the exhaustion seemed to stop him in his tracks, and he mumbled a quiet ‘ _please_ ’.  
“Ok. Need help getting up?”  
Keith clearly anticipated the answer, because he was hoisting Lance up before he’d even given him time to respond.  
“I’m not gonna mother you here, but you really need to get out of that shirt. Put something clean on.”  
“I know.”  
“Ok. Back soon.”  
Keith was hesitant to leave, even if he was only making a run for the kitchen, but the sight of Lance wobbling on his feet as he rummaged through his clothes as the door closed reaffirmed to him that he wasn’t going to be going anywhere. He passed his helmet on the way out, and briefly hovered over it, ready to open up comms and tell everyone else everything. But he stopped himself before he even put two hands on it, knowing that now wasn’t the time. Sure, Lance had to tell them. They had to know what this boy was pushing himself through. But not right now.

The run to the kitchen became a very literal run, as Keith attempted to jog as fast as possible while not making enough sound to alert anyone else. Thankfully, they all seemed to be staying put on the bridge, and he made it back to Lance’s room with a bowl of Hunk’s lunch concoction, reheated in an attempt to make it a little more appetising. It had tasted fine, but Keith was conscious of the fact that a bowl of cold mush wouldn’t be easy for Lance to stomach right now.

He was about to burst straight in, but on second thought, gently tapped on the door.  
“Hey man, food delivery.”  
There were slow footfalls, and Lance appeared at the door, swamped in a hoodie that Keith had never seen before, and looking no better, but mildly more comfortable.  
“Thought I ordered Dominos.”  
“Tough luck, buddy. This tastes pretty good though. Hunk did it, not Coran.”  
“Oh, ok.”  
They sat back down on the bed, backs against the wall, with Lance loosely wrapped in the blanket, poking half heartedly at the bowl of sludge, but occasionally managing a mouthful.  
It was a few minutes before anyone spoke, but it was Keith who broke the silence.  
“You know you are important, right? Like, to the team. To all of us.”  
Lance held the spoon still for a moment as he considered this.  
“No I- people say that a lot. And it’s really nice of you. And I know, listen, I know theoretically that it’s gonna be ok. But then I realise that I don’t know that’s it’s gonna be ok and I feel this stupid  _thing_ start burning up in my chest. And sometimes it’s quiet and sometimes-“  
He poked the spoon back into the bowl.  
“Sometimes it screams, I guess. I dunno.”  
“And you just deal with it? Is this the first time anyone’s been around?”  
“I just ride it out I guess. Some days are fine. I had a whole clear week a little while ago and I thought, you know. I’ve fixed it. And then sometimes I get four or five a day and I just have to deal with it because what’s anyone else gonna do about it? Hunk kinda accidentally caught the tail end of a bad day at the Garrison. I don’t think he totally knew what was going on though, which is for the best really.”  
“And at no point did you think, you know, I should tell someone about this. It’s pretty serious, look at you. It must draining.”  
“They would’ve kicked me out. Wouldn’t even have let me be a cargo pilot like this, and I don’t think I could have handled that, Keith. I’m sorry. This is so un- ‘badass paladins of voltron’, right.”  
“You know, Shiro would kick your ass if he heard you saying that.”  
“Yeah. Wait, really.”  
“Yeah, he heard Pidge make a self deprecating joke a few weeks ago and I think he might have cried about it. I think he’d appreciate you telling him about this, even if you don’t want to tell the others.”  
“I just- what can he do about it? I do this to myself, you know.”  
“He’s had a pretty rough time of it, Lance. And you’ve had a pretty rough time of it too. He’s had his fair share of bad days. I dunno, I just think, if anyone’s a kind, wise force on this ship, it’s him.”  
“He’ll be mad at me for not telling him.”  
“Oh, he’ll be furious. Not at you though, at himself. He prides himself on having that ‘distressed teammate radar’ of his.”  
Lance smiled, and instantly looked like Lance again. It was still jarring to think that this was the same guy who’d so calmly declared that he would be better off dead.  
“You don’t do this to yourself.”  
Lance didn’t respond. He’d managed to stomach all he could, and was looping a stray thread from the blanket around his index finger, absentmindedly.  
“Hey, you don’t reckon those pods fix brains, do you?”  
“No. That’d be great, right?”  
“Yeah.”  
“But maybe they’ve got something that’ll help though. I dunno, alien antidepressants?”  
“Yeah you know how dumb that sounds right.”  
“Yeah.”  
They spent a few minutes more in a comfortable silence.  
It was calm, and it was quiet, and for a split second in an infinite expanse of time, they were teenage boys.  
Tired, and proud, and so very, very alone.

**Author's Note:**

> What up I’m Isaac, I’m 19, and I never fuckin’ learnt how to differentiate between two male characters in dialogue.


End file.
